Spencer Hays, Business Magnate and Art Collector, Dies at 80

Spencer Hays, an apparel and publishing magnate, art collector and former Bible salesman who, with his wife, Marlene, donated more than 600 paintings by Matisse, Bonnard, Vuillard and other masters to the French government last fall, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 80.

The death, at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, was caused by a brain aneurysm, said Suzanne Moore, the curator of the couple’s collection. Mr. Hays lived in Manhattan.

Their donated art will be displayed at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris after the death of Mrs. Hays, under the terms of an agreement with the museum. She and Mr. Hays had been married for more than 60 years.

The gift — the largest foreign donation of art to France since World War II — was announced by President François Hollande in a ceremony at the Élysée Palace in October after months of negotiations with the couple.

The Musée d’Orsay has planned to create new gallery space to house the collection, which scholars have praised for its coherence.

Audrey Azoulay, France’s minister of culture and communication, said Mr. and Mrs. Hays had built an “exceptional collection” and chosen to “offer to France the treasures they assembled over the course of their life and of which they considered themselves only temporary guardians.”

The couple displayed their collection in a second home, in Nashville — a house modeled after the Hôtel de Noirmoutier in Paris, the former residence of the prefect of the Île-de-France region.

Mr. Hays was born on July 14, 1936, in Ardmore, Okla., and grew up in Gainesville, Tex. He liked to point out that when he was growing up, the only Paris he knew was in nearby Texas.

His father left the family when he was young, and he was raised by his mother, a homemaker, and his grandmother. He met Marlene Moss, a hometown girl, when they were 14; they married at 19.

After he graduated from Texas Christian University, the couple borrowed $40 from Mr. Hays’s grandmother and drove to Nashville to start selling books door to door.

In 1966, Mr. Hays founded Tom James Company, which sells high-quality suits to men in their offices or homes. The company later expanded, buying suppliers and other clothing companies under the umbrella of the Individualized Apparel Group. Among them are Oxxford Clothes and Holland & Sherry.

Mr. Hays also found success in publishing, among other businesses, as majority owner of Southwestern-Great American in Nashville. A 140-year-old business, it hires college students to sell books door to door, on commission, during summers.

The couple first visited Paris in 1971 and soon began collecting art. “We neither one were educated, so we just started buying what we loved,” Mr. Hays told The New York Times in October, sitting by a painting by Édouard Vuillard, his favorite artist. “We decided we would never buy a painting that we didn’t both love and want to keep forever. So we’ve sold practically nothing.”

In addition to his wife, Mr. Hays is survived by two daughters, Julie Gaglione and Mary Alice Hughes; two sisters, Milly Jackson and Mary Meadows; and six grandchildren.